Reposted from last year:
We had such high hopes. We thought that the Long Awaited One had finally come. We could sense it when we were with him. Something about being with him made our hearts beat faster. We knew he had a special relationship with Ha Shem that no one else had. He understood the heart and mind and will of God, he understood the ways of God, and he was so eager to teach us and to show us! He wanted us to know God the way he knew him, as his Father! When he spoke, there was not only rock-solid confidence and uncompromising authority in his voice, but also profound love and deep compassion in his eyes, unlike anyone we had ever met before. He taught us how to walk through life without fearing the future, for he knew that God’s plan was unfolding— and somehow, he was at the center of it! By being with him, somehow we were at the center it! We were sure he was God’s Anointed One. We could feel it in our bones, and we could see it in his eyes. How his eyes sparkled when he spoke about God as his Father! He was the One who would usher in the coming age, the tikkun olam that was spoken of by the prophets — we were sure of it! Remember when he sent us out, two-by-two, to proclaim the Kingdom of God in all of the surrounding villages? Remember when we came back and gave him our report? Remember how excited he was— he even saw the evil one as lightning falling from heaven! Those were amazing days, to say the least! The things that he taught us made our hearts beat faster. When we were with him, the things that we saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears made it impossible for us not to see the fingerprints of God all over his life and all over his teaching. When we were following this man, it felt great to be alive! Life was an adventure! The present was exciting, the future was secure, our joy was full, our hearts were overflowing. How great it was to be alive, walking the streets of Galilee with Yeshua! How we loved being with that man! And then they killed him. No, they didn’t stone him, the Jewish way. That would have been too kind. They crucified him, the Roman way. They had to make it as drawn out and as shameful and as excruciatingly painful as possible. And now he’s gone. How can we go on without our friend? How could we have been mistaken about his identity? Is there no coming tikkun olam? Were we believing in myths all these years? Has Ha Shem forgotten us? How can we have hope when there is no hope? As far as we are concerned, yesterday, on that cross, when Yeshua died, hope died. How can we go on? Truth be told, we don’t want to go on. We have no reason to go on. Hope is gone. Hope died on Friday. Today is Saturday, and we suddenly have nothing to live for, nothing to hope for, nothing to die for. It all happened just that fast. He’s here one minute, gone the next, and with him, everything we had ever hoped for— all gone in an instant. And now he’s in the tomb, and the tomb is silent— and the silence is a very loud silence. The silence is deafening! I guess we could go and visit the tomb, but what good would that do? Remember, it’s the Sabbath, so we can’t walk very far, and it’s the Passover, so we don’t want to defile ourselves. Besides, we’re supposed to be at home with our families celebrating the Passover— but the angel of death did not pass over Yeshua, and Elijah’s seat is still empty. We could reminisce, but that would just make us feel more sad and more hopeless. Where do we go from here? What happens after the Passover? What is the “new normal”? We could go back to our old jobs and our old routines and pretend that it was all just a dream, but we really can’t do that, and we really don’t want to. We can’t go back to what no longer exists. The world has changed, and we have changed— or so we had thought, but now we don’t know what to think. We sit here in silence. There’s nothing else to do. Saturday is the day of silence; the day of pause; the day of waiting for we know not what. It’s the day of suspended animation. It’s the day when the world waits. It’s the day when the world holds its breath. It’s the day of the drumroll that we think we may hear rumbling faintly, many miles off in the distance— but no, that must be our imagination. Nothing good is going to happen here any time soon. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be silent. We can learn to lament. We can learn to pour out our souls to God in utter honesty, as King David did in the Psalms and as Yeshua did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can learn to listen to what is really going on in our own hearts and minds and souls. We can be honest. We can face our deepest fears and doubts. After all, God already knows how we feel, and there’s no reason to hide ourselves from ourselves when there’s nothing left to lose. You can’t get much lower than rock bottom. What can we do on Saturday? We can listen for the still, soft voice of God, as did the Prophet Elijah. We can strain our ears to hear what God might be telling us. It’s easier to hear when the world around us is silent and there is nothing left to distract us. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be less like Martha and more like Mary, as Yeshua taught us. We can’t surround ourselves with a flurry of activity and noise in a frenzied effort to keep ourselves occupied, distracted, too busy to think and feel. That doesn’t work when there is nothing left to do or think or feel. All we can do is sit and wait— sit at the feet of God and try our best to listen— but isn’t that exactly what Yeshua told Martha and Mary? Didn’t the “comforters” of Job sit with him in grief and silence for seven days and seven nights? Didn’t the psalmist say “He makes me to rest in green pastures”? Perhaps God is making us rest. After creating the heavens and the earth, didn’t Ha Shem Himself rest on the seventh day, the Sabbath? Dreams die on Friday, but if we are listening for the voice of God, new dreams and new hopes can begin to be stirred on Saturday. Nothing very solid, no “aha” moments, no amazing revelations from the heavens, no lightning or thunderbolts or visions in the skies, but the smallest stirrings of the faintest hope of new beginnings. That may be all we get on Saturday, but that is enough. A little flicker of hope is all that we need. Even if we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least we can begin to suspect that the light is out there somewhere. Maybe we’ll see it tomorrow. Didn’t the psalmist of old remind us “You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again” and “Sorrow may last for a season, but joy comes in the morning”? Is it possible that we can have joy again— maybe not today, but eventually? We remember what Yeshua taught us on that last night when we were all together— could it be that it was only two nights ago? He taught us “In this life you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world”. Something is stirring. A still, small voice is speaking. The smallest flicker of hope is being born. Dare we believe it? Dare we trust it? It’s not over. When we cannot see the hand of God, then we must learn to trust the heart of God— and the heart of God toward us is good. Yeshua taught us well, and he was right. The heart of God toward us is good. Sometimes the voice of God speaks the loudest when everything else is silent. Sometimes we hear the voice of God most clearly when we are lamenting in silence, too sad and too stunned and too weak and to numb to be able speak or to fix or to repair or to distract or to blame or to argue or to defend or to criticize or to rationalize or to analyze or to strategize or to give an opinion or to even have an opinion. That’s when we learn that today is not the end of hope. It’s the day of waiting. It’s the day before the day of new beginnings. It’s Saturday.
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And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples, and saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither. And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him. And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt? And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way. And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest. And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve. (Mark 11:1-11)
We had it all wrong. We thought he was riding into town to gather an army. We thought he was going to conquer the Romans and restore our beloved Israel to its own people. We thought he would push the Roman oppressors out of Jerusalem, then out of Judea and Samaria and totally away from the region. We were ready to march with him. We were ready to fight for him. We were ready to pick up arms. We were ready to make him our general, and eventually our king. Oh, how we wanted him to declare war against the Romans! Oh, how we yearned for him to issue a call to arms! We would have gladly left our families, our fields, our occupations in a heartbeat! Why didn’t he pull together an army? Why didn’t he march into Jerusalem, kick out the Roman leaders, and establish himself as king? Surely we would have followed him. We were a potential army, an angry mob without a leader. He was a leader without an army— only a rag-tag group of fisherman, a doctor and a tax collector. Why couldn’t we have joined forces? We would be the army, he would be the general— or so we had hoped— and so we waved our palm branches and chanted our chants and cheered our cheers and sang our battle hymn of the republic while he rode into the city on his silly donkey. “Make Israel Great Again”, we chanted over and over again, but it was not meant to be. He entered into Jerusalem, he went into the temple, he looked around, he got back on his donkey, and he and his band of twelve went out to Bethany. Bethany? That’s such a small town. You can’t round up a posse of soldiers in Bethany. There’s hardly anyone out there, no guns or weapons, no stash of cash, no shakers and movers— just a bunch of sleepy old farmers and bored teenagers and a few sleepy old cows and maybe one or two old horses. Revolutions start in Jerusalem and Rome. Revolutions do not start in Bethany. We had it all wrong. We thought that every problem in the world could be fixed by power. The big fish swallow the smaller fish. We fight for what we want, and the strongest man wins. That’s just the way it works. But this man had a very different way of looking at things. He taught things like “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” and “Do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also” and “If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too” and “If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles” and “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” and “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you”. Generals and kings and the powerful people of this world don’t talk about such things. And what about all this talk about love? We weren’t interested in loving our enemies; we were interested in destroying them before they destroyed us. It became clear that this man wasn’t going to help us to achieve our agenda. All this talk about love and servanthood was getting in the way, and the people were starting to buy into it. This man could undo the very revolution that we were hoping that he would establish, and so we set the wheels into motion that would eventually lead to his crucifixion by the Romans. We partnered with our enemy to stamp out the one whom we both rejected. No, we did not love our enemies, the Romans, but we needed for them to add their political power to our religious power so that we could stamp him out together. We had it all wrong. Looking back, we realized that we were the ones who had been brainwashed by the ways of this world, and Jesus had it right all along. We had thought that by combining political power with religious devotion and blind patriotism and military might, we could bring about God’s kingdom, but oh how wrong we were! How could we have been so blind? We crucified the Son of God. In our zeal to use God to bring about our own agenda, we murdered the Son of God. Now we realize that we are all Judas. Looking back, now we realize what was going on. He had to die as an atonement for our sins, as prophesied by the great Prophet Isaiah. He had to rise from the dead as conqueror over our real enemies: sin and death. He had to ascend into heaven, to be seated at his rightful place at the right hand of God the Father. He had to come back again to the earth, to establish his kingdom upon the earth, as had been promised to our forefathers. Yes, Messiah will rule from the throne of David, the Kingdom of God will come to the earth, but it will happen in God’s way, and in God’s timing, and according to God’s principles, not the principles of this world. His kingdom will be characterized not by military might but by meekness, and by not resisting our enemies with a show of force, and by turning the other cheek, and by giving away our belongings rather than fighting for our rights, and by carrying a soldier’s gear for an extra mile, and by loving our friends enough to die for them, and by loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us, doing good to those who hate us, and praying for those who abuse and persecute us. Now we understand the words of the great Prophet Micah: “And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”. We had it all wrong. We were chanting the wrong chants. We were singing the wrong songs. But now we understand. Now we repent. Now we believe. Now we realize that God has forgiven us, his enemies, for all that we have ever done wrong, including the murder of his very own Son! God has forgiven us, and we are eternally grateful. Because of this, we are learning how to forgive each other, how to love each other, and how to love and forgive our enemies. We are being prepared to live as citizens of His coming kingdom. Now we realize that he sent his Son to die for those who crucified him. We are his grateful followers, and our joy knows no limits, but we had to admit that we were wrong before we could receive the love and forgiveness that would transform us into citizens of his coming kingdom. Now we sing a different song. |
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